It furnished them with a religious _flag_, under cover of which they could work themselves out.

This was necessary in an age when the Christian theology was unquestioningly accepted in one or another form by wellnigh all men, and hence entered as a practical belief into their daily thoughts and lives.

The Lutheran Reformation, from its inception in 1517 down to the Peasants' War of 1525, at once absorbed, and was absorbed by, all the revolutionary elements of the time.

Up to the last-mentioned date it gathered revolutionary force year by year.

But this was the turning point.
With the crushing of the peasants' revolt and the decisively anti-popular attitude taken up by Luther, the religious movement associated with him ceased any longer to have a revolutionary character.